


Not Dead, Still Gone

by musicalsmarvelandmore



Series: Newsies (Mostly Sprace) One Shots [6]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt, Grief/Mourning, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Not Happy, Presumed Dead, Sad Spot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-06
Updated: 2020-07-06
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:07:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25115875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicalsmarvelandmore/pseuds/musicalsmarvelandmore
Summary: They never found his body.The boy knew his lover would never leave him. They had one last morning together, his lover giving him one last kiss and a cocky smile over his shoulder.No one ever saw Racetrack Higgins again.
Relationships: Spot Conlon/Racetrack Higgins
Series: Newsies (Mostly Sprace) One Shots [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593484
Comments: 2
Kudos: 29





	Not Dead, Still Gone

They never found his body.

The boy knew his lover would never leave him. They had one last morning together, his lover giving him one last kiss and a cocky smile over his shoulder.

No one ever saw Racetrack Higgins again. 

He had wanted to know what had happened to the boy he had fallen in love with. Had he found some asshole trying to mug someone? Race would have gotten in the way. Things could have gone wrong. He would have liked to be the hero.

Race could have been hit by a carriage, too tired in the early morning to have his wits about him, stepping in the road at the wrong time. A stupid accident, the boy too exhausted by living separate lives in two boroughs to even realize before he was gone.

Race could have been forcibly enlisted by the navy. Though that was the most unlikely of them all, it was the best situation. He didn’t look like a grown man yet, just on the adult side of gawky. He didn’t look like he could work on a ship. He would hate it. But if he was alive, then that would be enough.

Spot dreamed Racer was alive. That he woke up one day and the other boy was standing there, his wide grin on his face, talking faster than he could thing about what had happened, why he had left. That he was back, to curl into bed beside Spot and kiss him hello.

He always had to wake up. To face another day, knowing that Race wouldn’t come find him that evening with a smile and a wild scheme. To face a world without that smile, or those lithe fingers running through his hair, or the innumerable number of things he had fallen in love with.

Every day that passed by, it felt like it got harder and harder to remember what Race looked like, what his laugh sounded like, what it felt like to have the boy pressed against him in an open secret to the rest of the world. Their relationship was just for them, but Spot had always figured most boys knew something was going on. Now, with the way everyone looked at him, he knew it to be true.

Before this, he couldn’t remember crying. He had thought he just didn’t anymore. After all, he was practically a man grown.

Now, that felt like all he did. He had never felt so alone, even though all the newsies of Brooklyn and Manhattan and maybe even all the newsies of New York knew that his heart was broken.

He saw the looks they gave him. He didn’t want their pity or sympathy. They said “I’m sorry” and moved on. He knew they meant it, but what did they have to be sorry for? Race was gone, and it was like he had gone with him. He would have done anything to be with him again. He didn’t think he’d ever be able to move on or forget, and everyone else expected him to move on, to function, to be the person who he was before. But that person had disappeared with Race, and Spot didn’t think he’d ever find either of them again.

He didn’t talk to the boy’s friends, over across the bridge in Manhattan. There wasn’t a point. He had nothing in common with them besides that they lost someone; them a friend, him his lover. After they had investigated for weeks without any sign of Race, figuring out that he was gone, there wasn’t any way that could get Race back. No remembering would ever be able to ease that burden.

He didn’t want to give up searching, but none of them had a choice. The world kept on moving, even without Race. After weeks of searching and praying, prayers Spot hadn’t said since he ran away to join the newsies, they had to give up. He was reluctant to do so. He knew some of the Manhattan boys felt the same.

Throughout the searches, Spot never met their eyes. Sure, it was no one’s fault that Race was gone, besides whoever was involved, but that didn’t ease Spot’s guilt. He knew they felt guilty too, but they all drowned alone. He didn’t know those boys without Racer there, and any interaction was nothing but a painful reminder that Race wasn’t there.

The Manhattan boys had gone through his stuff. He would have been upset they had given up on his lover, but he had to. Whatever had happened, he didn’t think he’d ever be able to find him.

There wasn’t much to sort through. Sixteen years in this city, eight of which were with the newsies, and Race didn’t leave anything behind to show him. He had no legacy. He was just another young boy lost too soon.

The boys from the other borough had given him two things. The first was only picture they had of Racer, from the New York Sun during the strike. Race had kept from his day of fame. Spot hadn’t had a copy, but many of the Manhattan boys involved did. Now, he treated the single picture with care. It was the only way he could remember what the boy looked like. Spot couldn’t lose that too.

He also was given a small silver cross. Neither of them had practiced religion in years, despite both being raised Catholic, but he kept the other boy’s chain, anyway. It spoke of a childhood away from the streets where a boy could disappear, lost forever. It spoke of harsher things too, a woman pleading for her husband to stop and a small child getting in the way only to be bruised more and more. Race’s past before the newsies was rough. Now, everything about Race was a part of Spot’s past.

He wasn’t religious, and neither was the boy it belonged to, but he kept it anyway. It was all he had left.

He didn’t truly believe the boy could ever come back, but if he did, he would be there for him. Waiting, like he had never waited before for anything in his life. Before all of this, he could do whatever he wanted to seize the day. He had never waited for anything, and yet here he was, waiting for someone who would never return. He knew that, logically, but the emotional side of him, which had never existed before he met his lover, wouldn’t let him stop believing. He couldn’t be truly gone, because if his lover was gone, then what did he still have to live for?

People don’t just disappear, except sometimes they do. And now that Racer had, how was Spot supposed to keep on living without his boyfriend at his side?

**Author's Note:**

> Because nothing says 21st birthday like finishing the angsty deathfic you've been working on.
> 
> This comes out of brainstorming for my work Soaked and deciding against killing Race there. Still, the temptation of Spot feels was too strong, so I wrote this instead.
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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